Chapter 35 35
Quinn's POV
The week after I moved out of Maddie's place, I threw myself into classes the way I always did when everything else in my life was falling apart. It was the one thing I could control, anyway. It I showed up to classes and take notes, I would not have to worry about the way the other parts of my life was spiralling.
Except that I just couldn't forget. My ribs hurt every time I breathed too deeply, the cut above my eyebrow had scabbed over but still pulled when I frowned, and the bruise along my jaw had turned a nasty shade of yellow-green. No amount of concealer was fully covering that.
I sat in the back row of every lecture that week, and kept my hood up when I could get away with it. I avoided eye contact with anyone who looked like they might ask me questions about my injury.
I felt as though I was losing my entire mind.
My Investigative Journalism class on Wednesday was particularly brutal, because the professor spent forty while minutes talking about source protection and the responsibility that journalists had toward the people who trusted them with information. I sat there at the back, thinking about how Jonathan had lost his life because of me.
I was crossing the courtyard between the journalism building and the library on Thursday afternoon, with my head down, when someone grabbed my arm.
"JEEZ!" I screamed and whirled around with my hand already moving toward my coat pocket, before my brain caught up with my eyes. It was Maddie.
Maddie appeared just as shocked as I felt. There also wasn't the usual bright, open look on her face this time. She looked hurt, and I felt my heart plummet as I remembered how I had left her house without telling her. Like a fucking coward.
"Quinn," she said.
"Oh, Maddie, it's you." I dropped my hand. "Hey."
"Hey." She peered at me for a long moment. "I've been trying to reach you."
"I know. I've been busy."
"You left," she accused me. "Four days after moving in, you just packed all of your stuff and left without telling me. All I got was a note on the kitchen counter saying you'd found somewhere else."
She shifted her backpack strap. "Did I do something? Is it because my friends came over? I know you don't like noise in the apartment..."
"No, no," I interrupted immediately. "Maddie, no. It had nothing to do with you."
"Then what was it?" She asked.
How could I tell her why exactly I escaped? How could I look into her confused face and let her know that she could be in mortal danger just by her association to me? Maddie was a very brave woman, and she would probably have handled the truth better than most people would. But being able to handle the truth did not mean being safe from the danger it could bring, and I had already learned that lesson the hard way through Jonathan.
"I just needed my own space," I replied, swallowing heavily. "You know I work odd hours, and I didn't want to keep disrupting your routine. That's all."
Maddie looked at me with the unimpressed expression of a journalism student who had been trained to recognize a non-answer. "Quinn, That's not a real reason."
"It's the reason I have," I replied. "Please, just accept it. Okay? This has nothing to do with you."
Maddie wore a blank look as she assessed my words. Then her eyes foamed over my face, the way they had the night I came home from the alley.
"Your face still has those bruises," she pointed out.
I had been hoping she wouldn't look that closely in the daylight. "I told you, I slipped and f—"
"Hell no!" She snapped, gesturing to each individual wound on my face. "From what I can see, that bruise on your jaw is at least a week old. That cut above your eye is healing wrong, it should have been cleaned properly when it happened." She peered closer. "And you're holding yourself like your ribs hurt. Did you break a rib?"
I said nothing.
"Look, what the hell is going on with you?" she asked, and the hurt in her voice had shifted into annoyance. "And please don't tell me you slipped again. You know it's not that easy to lie to me."
"I got into a situation," I said carefully. "It's handled. I'm fine."
"You are not fine, Quinn. You look like you got into a fight with the wrong crowd!" She retorted. "You stink. When last did you have a shower? Where are you even sleeping these days? Do we need to report this to the police? Are you..."
She gasped suddenly, a hand sliding towards her face. "Quinn, are you selling drugs?" She whisper-yelled.
"What? No!"
"Then, have you been to see a doctor?" She asked.
"I don't need a doctor."
"Your ribs..."
"Are bruised, not broken. I already checked."
"You checked yourself?" Maddie stared at me. "You checked your own ribs?"
"I've had worse," I replied, which was probably not the most reassuring thing I could have said, because Maddie's expression went through several stages of alarm in quick succession.
"Quinn Eisenhower!" She yelled, "I don't know what you're involved in, and I can see you're not going to tell me. Fine, sure, I'll respect that for now. But you are going to the campus clinic."
Panic filled my lungs. "No, I don't need—"
"I'm not asking," Maddie said. "God knows what other injury you're hiding under that smelly hoodie, yet you're walking around campus pretending like everything is fine. I am not going to just stand here and watch you do that."
She folded her arms. "I will physically drag you there myself if I have to. I'm stronger than I look."
"Why are you so scared of the clinic?" She asked, and I fought the urge to tell her it was because I would run into Harmony—another person I couldn't bear to see right now.
"Just go to the clinic," Maddie was saying, "let someone look at you, and then you can go back to being mysterious and secretive, living wherever you're living now that you won't tell me about." She dropped her hand. "You, Quinn, are going to the clinic this evening after classes. Do you hear me? Consider it a promise."
Her promise sounded more like a threat to me, but I just sighed and nodded. Maddie pursed her lips, grabbed my arm and started to lead me away.
"Come on, Quinn. Let's go get lunch."